we'll talk about one to two feet of additional snow on top of the one foot they already have. lawrence, we made history with this storm. one we've increase seen the elements all come together like this. unfortunately, right through like this. unfortunately, right through election day. >> what is the very last week of hurricane season? >> it actually goes until the end of november. >> end of november. i thought november 1st was the cutoff. >> it's very rare to have them in november. it's crazy. it's halloween. >> storm coverage will continue live with chris jansing picking up our coverage from here. it is a little after 11:00

p.m. here on the east coast. this is live continuing coverage of hurricane sandy now post tropical storm sandy. good evening, i'm chris jansing. we'll be here with you all throughout the night along with meteorologist bill karins. at this hour, we have a lot to tell you. let's get you caught up. serious flooding across the mid-atlantic coast including new york city where water is entering the subway system and the bridge connecting manhattan and brooklyn. con edison reports that almost all of manhattan all the way down to the battery, that's the lower tip of the city, all of it without power. more than 300,000 homes without power in new york city. 3.6 million along the east coast. already it's been a deadly storm. at least ten deaths reported. new york, new jersey, connecticut, pennsylvania, west

virginia, we have video from manhattan's east side. let's get you caught up on what is going on here in new york. michelle franzen is on the phone with us from battery park city. that's the lower tip of manhattan where a lot of people who are tourists know where to go. michelle, what's the latest where you are? >> chris, i just walked down here to the area where the water was rushing up earlier. it's definitely retreating but certainly not passed the walkway. a long way to go for that. battery set a record, nearly 14 foot -- 14 feet for the final measurements of the surge in this area. the last time the records were

taken in the battery was in 1821 when that record first stood and that was december 11th. that gives you an idea of what sort of history was made with this storm of sandy. i should mention, a lot of power outages down here in lower manhattan and we can see a lot of the darkness. we see emergency vehicles further down by the stanton island ferry area and also the brooklyn tunnel has taken on water earlier tonight. so still a precarious situation. in downtown, battery park city it's part of the evacuation area and there are low lying areas of new york city that are very

concerned and we've seen flooding and images on the east side of lower manhattan as well and the area in battery park here, the roads are covered with water. the water has started to recede. we had to put our satellite dish down for a while. other than that, we seem to be through the worst of the surge part, chris, and now we have to deal with the aftermath. >> i just want to let people know, while you stay with us, that there was an explosion at a con edison substation. obviously that's part of the problem. the coned outages will last at least through tomorrow morning. look at those pictures. potentially longer per the

governor. new york state has 1.38 million people without power. the area where you are is an area -- a zone of new york city that was evacuated. what's the word down there? did most people heed the warning, ida? >> you know, we were down here and we saw them packing up. a lot of people said they were not going to ride it out like they did irene. it's hard to say. you can see some of the windows in some of these high rises where there is power to them, generator power or what have you, but obviously it's very dark down here in lower manhattan with the power that's been shut off on purpose in many areas and that's the con edison said that they are doing that so they can easily -- more easily restore power once this storm goes through. but they've got a lot on their

hands tonight, as we mentioned, with that explosion on one of the transformers on the other side. >> ida single, thank you so much. if we can go back to that video that we were just looking at, for people that have not seen the coverage throughout the evening, this is a picture of a crane atop a luxury high rise in midtown manhattan. it has been dangling precariously, dangerously off the top of that building which has become known in manhattan as the global billionaire's club because the nine full floors at the top have been sold to billionaires. two of the dupe pleks are $90 million each. you can just imagine the scene that happened there in midtown manhattan when that happened today. there had to be evacuations in that area because of the danger. just imagine falling debris including the parker meridian hotel. they were evacuated as a

precaution and there were no immediate report of injuries there. engineers and inspectors having to hike up 74 flights to get a look. they are going to have to wait to make sure that all of the winds have died down before they can safely go up there and make sure that they have a situation that is safe for them to do an inspection. philadelphia mayor michael nutter is on the phone with us. mr. mayor, good evening. thanks so much for joining us. >> it's great to be with you. thank you. >> tell us what the situation is in your city. >> can you say that one more time in you went in and out. >> can you tell us what the situation is right now in your city? >> in philadelphia we have continued rain. it's been steady to heavy all day long. winds are picking up. we're anticipating the bulk of

the storm coming somewhere in the next hour, hour and a half. we're concerned about coastal flooding from the delaware river with heights of ten feet or so. the record for the delaware is 10 1/2 feet. we're particularly concerned about that as well as surges in rivers and streams. and tributaries all across the city of philadelphia. we have a number of people -- 350 plus people who are in shelters in three locations around the city of philadelphia. 90 to 100 trees down. 40 some thousand folks without power. we are working with the utility company to get power on as quick as possible. we have a quick plan and great people and citizens who are paying attention and focused.

>> do you have areas that are under evacuation orders? >> i'm sorry? say that again? >> did you have areas that are under evacuation orders? >> we don't have areas that are totally flooded out but, again, anticipating another inch of rain before midnight as well as the rivers rising. we have some natural areas where we do get flooding over in the section of philadelphia and river road, often taking it pretty hard. so these are all areas that we are monitoring, making sure that citizens are safe as well as positioning people and assets if we need to jump into action immediately. >> here in new york city, mr. mayor, it was virtually a ghost town today. most businesses were shut down because of public transportation, unable to get workers in safely and it will be the situation again tomorrow. what about in philadelphia? what do you think the impact is

on business? what's the economic impact to your city? >> it's hard to estimate at this point the economic impact certainly the city government, we were closed today and all parts of the government were closed today. we expect the same thing. we are -- we've already announced the same thing for tomorrow as well as all of our public schools, parochial schools, charter schools as well. probably 25, 30 colleges and universities have already -- the bulk of them announced yesterday that they were closing today and tomorrow and so certainly many of the employers, because the -- all of the regional rail system -- the entire mass trans sis sit testimony was shut down and it was difficult for the employees to get in. so clearly an economic impact but we won't be able to do that assessment for probably a couple weeks. >> well, we wish you all the

best, mayor nutter from philadelphia. thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us tonight. >> thank you very much. and with me all night tonight will be nbc meteorologist bill karins. you heard what they were worried about, continuing rains. where is the storm headed next? >> i would say we're about 80% done with the destruction that sandy is going to do. about 20% left with the high cycle and a few areas down on the maryland and delaware coast areas and connecticut and rhode island as we approach midnight and then minor wind damage done over the next four hours. from here on out, instead of strengthening or maintaining itself, sandy is going to continue to weaken ever so slowly as it drifts into western pennsylvania during the day on tuesday. let me show you where we are at. high wind warnings continue at this hour. we still have many hours gusting well into the strong tropical storm force. we still have numerous wind problems in new york city with

flying glass and buildings. it's not as bad as it was, dropping down to the 40s. atlantic city, that's still a strong wind and 51 for you. look at allentown. that's far inland at 60 mile-per-hour winds. there's people in pennsylvania now losing power. we're a little bit down to the southern shore. this has been 36 to 48 hours straight of tropical storm force winds from areas from like ocean city to wallop's island to virginia beach. you probably wonder when it's going to stop howling for you and that will be tomorrow. in new england, not quite as bad. winds are dying down. not much in the way of wind damage for you anymore. and how about the snowstorm that is continuing in the mountains of west virginia. a hurricane with snow. it's just a rare event and now we have a hybrid type storm that we're dealing with. it's like a big old nor'easter.

we could see as much as two to three feet. we already have numerous areas report about a foot of snow. but from southern west virginia down through the blue field areas and even into the mountains, this storm just -- you know, chris, some storms don't live up to the media hype and this one was talked about for four or five days. we knew it was coming and this one delivered just as bad unfortunately as we said it would. i don't say that with pleasure. it's an ugly scene and once daybreak occurs, especially on the jersey shore, it's going to break a lot of hearts. >> west virginia and maryland under a blizzard warning. when can you remember that a hurricane has produced a blizzard warning? >> it has happened before where a hurricane system has moved into new england late in the season and produced snow. but into the central

appalachians, i'm going to have to have someone look that up or look it up in the weather books. >> thank you very much, bill karins. he mentioned what was going on in new jersey. atlantic city is an absolute disaster is as much of the coast. more than 100,000 people are in the dark there in new jersey. the storm made landfall in atlantic city about 8:00 tonight. 80-mile-per-hour winds. the boardwalk completely under water. the city largely submerged. we're going to continue our coverage of sandy coming up right after this. [ male announcer ] wouldn't it be cool if you could combine the capability of a pathfinder with the comfort of a sedan and create a next-gen s.u.v. with best-in-class fuel economy of 26 miles per gallon, highway, and best-in-class passenger roominess? yeah, that would be cool. introducing the all-new nissan pathfinder. it's our most innovative pathfinder ever.

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we are back with our coverage of sandy and those are night vision lens looking into midtown manhattan and the crane that is dangling 74 stories up a luxury residential building. we are watching that very closely. a very precarious situation there as it is throughout much of manhattan. in fact, there has been a confirmed death. the first in a city. a man in flushing queens when a tree crashed into his house and crushed him. ida of our new york station wnbc, is in lower manhattan. ida, what can you tell us? >> reporter: chris, we're maybe a couple blocks away from the world trade center site and there was significant flooding out here for much of the evening. i'd say from maybe 8:00 up until -- well, right this very moment. check out the flooding here. these are the northbound lanes

of the highway. if i walk back here, i'm probably in the deepest area where we are standing, maybe about ten inches of water here. if we look up north, it's a little dark and hard to see and it looks like there's two feet of water in that direction. all in all, the good news is, we've seen a lot of receding. maybe an hour ago this entire area was completely underwater. i would say half an hour ago, i want to show you this cardboard box that barely survived the storm. this was underwater half an hour ago and that's a good 50 feet from where the water is right now. things are starting to recede. at the height of it, when the storm really hit, we had much of battery park city under water. we were stranded on what amounted to an island of high ground within battery park city and we just had water everywhere

we turned. the entire west side highway was under water. it's unprecedented. it's historic flooding here in new york city. much of lower manhattan submerged beneath the hudson river, new york harbor. it's an island, of course, and surrounded by water at every turn and it's very rare to see this much water flow and surge on to city streets. one witness telling us that it looked like the bottom of a toilet bowl the way the water was circling down into the tunnel. we've been told that water has been flowing down well into the subbe way system, flooding the subways there. as you know, the new york city subway system was shut down yesterday. it's likely they thought they'd be able to get it back up at some point tomorrow or later on today, i should say. i don't even know what time it is anymore.

but now that there's such massive flooding, getting that system up and running again is going to be extremely difficult. the other issue downtown tonight is the power. the power is out where we are and we're told that anyone south of 39th street, for those familiar with manhattan, have lost power as well. the traffic lights are out. the apartment buildings are out, the industrial buildings are out. no one has a backup generator going. even though the floodwaters are receding, which, of course, is great news, it's still a dangerous and precarious situation out here. a ghost town in lower manhattan, if you've ever seen one because, quite frankly, even though the storm look like the worst of it is on its way out, we're still dealing with the after effects which is the power and the flooding. >> ida siegal in lower manhattan. officials said from the mta it would take anywhere from 14

hours to four days to pump out the water and then after that it's very painstaking work to figure out what might be damaged, what might need to be replaced. that's an ongoing situation in manhattan. let's move to delaware. the dover post there reporting about 650 people in rehoboth beach had to be evacuated. good evening. are you there? >> yes, i am. >> as i understand it, rehoboth was to be reached by midnight tonight. what's the situation there? >> we expected high tide in rehoboth around 9:00 so we're past high tide and it moves up the state in the northern part of the state. we were very concerned about the 9:00 because the flooding is

very serious but it didn't appear to get materially worse with the 9:00 high tide and we're hopeful that that will be the case as well as high tide moves up the state. >> what was affected by the flooding? >> well, we had a number of homes where we had floods. we had an evacuation in most of the low lying coastal areas. so fortunately we were able to deal with that had not folks evacuated. primarily roads that typically flood when we have a lot of rain and we won't be able to do a real good assessment until tomorrow morning when the sun comes up in terms of the long-term damage. you mentioned we had 600-plus in shelters around the coast. we have about 924 up and down the state in shelters and with had up to 40,000 without power. you mentioned a lower number now and i'm not sure that it's that low but it's definitely going down and that's really a credit to the folks who were out doing

repairs right now. >> and let me ask you about emergencies. i know here in new york, 911 was getting ten times the normal volumes of calls and in fact they were telling people, please don't call unless it's a true emergency. what can you tell us about that in your state and in addition to that any reports of any rescues that need to be made? >> well, we certainly had a higher than usual volume of 911 call. i don't think it was anywhere near the magnitude of new york because, as i mentioned, we did a good job of evacuating those areas where we expected to have those kinds of problems that would generate 911 call and our residents and visitors did fantastic in terms of complying with that. that saved us an awful lot of problems in what would have had to have been rescued when the storm hit. >> let me ask you about those without power. how much do you have help? we saw pictures in the last 24 to 48 hours large number of trucks coming. what are you being told by your

power company about how long those people may be without juice? >> well, the initial concern had been that the high winds would persist over a long period of time and that that would interfere with the ability to get repairs done. so far we've been able to get power back done. not for everyone, obviously, but for more people than we had initially anticipated. we want to get everybody's power back on but that process, although it's obviously not where we would want it to be, it's going much better than we had expected and that's in large part due to the fact that the power company saw this coming and brought additional resources into the state in advance. >> thank you very much, lieutenant governor, and good luck to you. i know you will have cleanup to do tomorrow. that's matthew denn. and to the point of power and 3.6 million people without power, we talked about those pictures and we've literally seen caravans of power workers

coming from other part of the state to this part of the country bringing hundreds of line workers and tree workers. there is some anticipation that they will already get up and running. the key for them as well -- and we were talking about this with some of the other stuff that needs to get done, is with the winds. some of the are repairs will have to wait until they feel confident that the worst of the winds have died down. msnbc coverage will continue right after this. i'm a conservative investor.

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we have some new information on exactly what's going on and one of the things that we heard repeatedly over the last 24 hours or so was to heed what public officials were saying about evacuations, about staying safe. and part of the reason is, because then those rescue crews that go in, they are putting their lives in danger. well, in eastern connecticut, a firefighter died responding to a call. a tree hit his vehicle and he died of cardiac arrest. in the meantime, in greenich,

connecticut, the national guard is responding to people who did not evacuate there. they had to abandon efforts once residents were pulled to safety. the four houses are basically gone now. and in westport, connecticut, 80% of that town is without power. so we are just starting to get some sense of what the full impact of this storm is. we've been talking a lot about new york, the water level at battery park city reached about 13 1/2 feet. that is a record high. those waters are receding now and high tide has passed. wnbc reports that the city's 911 system has been overloaded due to numerous nonemergency calls with calls for water rescue as well. christine quinn is the speaker of new york city council. she joins me now. it's good to talk to you.

good morning. good evening. >> thank you. >> give us the latest, first of all, on the situation with power. everybody about beneath 39th street has no electricity? >> correct. everyone in manhattan just about south of let's say 40th street, give or take, has no power. part of that is subsystems down, flooding, we have a system so that you don't lose power, you lose the machinery and the flooding has caused a fire at one of our coned stations on 14th street that created more of an outage beyond the pre-emptive outage. we also have widespread outages in the boroughs outside of manhattan who have overhead wires that provide their electric electricity.

>> let me ask you about tunnels and flooding and how that might affect the subway system? >> well, we anticipated that the big storm would very likely cause flooding in the tunnels. that's why mass transit authorities closed the subway down at governor cuomo's very wise instruction. that matters because we can then get the cars, all of the machinery out of the tunnel to dry on higher ground. but the tunnel getting flooded, we can dry those out in a relatively reasonable amount of time and within eight hours after irene this is worst but just to give it some context, the cars and machines, had they been there, it really would have been a disaster. so we anticipated flooding in the subway. how extensive that is, beyond our expectations, we can't really assess that until morning. >> in the meantime, we understand that nyu medical center is being evacuated. what can you tell me about that

situation? >> there were a number -- there are a number of health care facilities and in consultation with the health care facilities not to evacuate them to begin a number of days ago discharging patients who were healthy enough to be discharged, moving patients on ventilators to other facilities in case, god forbid, something like this happened. so we really tried to reduce the number of people and take those who couldn't get off out. we believe most -- we believe the facility had excessive backup generators, et cetera. for whatever reason, that has become a problem at nyu so in an orderly fashion the patients are being moved to different facilities. in irene we moved patients from zone a to zone b and zone b to

c. so for better or worse, we have these experiences of patients being absorbed by other hospitals. >> mayor bloomberg instructed taxis and cars to get off the roads that they needed to keep the roads clear and that's a good reminder for people who may be in manhattan right now. in general, you talked about the assessment that will be made tomorrow morning. do you think tomorrow morning as well that the city will have a good idea of when it might be up and running, when taxis may be back on some of the roads? >> i think we'll have a much better sense tomorrow morning and, remember, twoef assess the situation in midtown manhattan but also communities all over the other boroughs, i'm hearing about extreme flooding in staten island. there's going to be a broad base assessment and what we will need

to do for our business district but also the residential communities. the mayor said about car, we have flooding, for example, the hudson river, and that's in my lifetime and i've been in this city for, you know, well over 20 years, have never happened. so remarkable things are happening that can get your car stuck. your car is stuck, it's going to get in the way of an ambulance or fire truck and that's the last thing that the city needs right now. >> very important words to close on. speaker christine quinn, thank you for taking the time. good luck. >> take care. thank you. i want to go to seaside heights, new jersey. brian thompson has been there from our wnbc. how is it going? how are things looking? >> i'm cold, miserable, and it doesn't look very good at all, chris. i can tell you just a couple of miles away here on the jersey

shore, 13 homes burned down in one little cluster, a shopping center strip mall burned in berkeley township, a couple of miles behind me. we have a lot of power lines that are starting to -- look right here, these are getting a lot closer. they are starting to drop right there towards us which is not a good sign. we have reports of four deaths right now in new jersey. i don't know if you reported that earlier, chris, or not. two people in a car accident in morris county and thra tree falg into a house and a tree falling on a pedestrian. none of these are good reports, of course, and then you have the situation in atlantic city where you had people in evacuation shelters on the island that the city occupies and the waters came up, washed out a big swatch of atlantic city. we don't know the status.

we have the nuclear plant which had to declare an unusual event just a little bit of go. that's a few miles away from here in lacy dotownship. the unusual event was, guess what, high waters. fortunately the whole unit was already off line for maintenance so there's no particular threat right now but it's still not good news for a nuclear plant that provides 9% of the electricity to the state of new jersey which, right now, could use all of the electricity it could get if they could get the power lines up which they can't and instead we have hundreds and thousands of people, probably close to 1 million or more people, would be my guess at this point, who are without power in this state because of all of the trees that have gone down, all of the transformers that have exploded all over the place, caught fire, arced, whatever the terminology is for whatever happened in those

particular circumstances. a hospital up in edgewater on the hudson river that is without power. they were trying to get emergency generators in as quickly as possible because the generators that they didn't have didn't work or were flooded. they don't know if they are going to have evacuate that hospital like they did in new york city. you have a police station that had the roof blown off. they had to bring in a mobile command post so they could man the police station in that community in bourbon county. how is that for a list? >> it's unbelievable for what is going on. a once in a lifetime type of mammoth storm that has hit new jersey and we won't see the damage that is done until daylight. but you've been there, brian. give us a sense of what it was like. the worst of it, we mentioned before, that it made landfall in atlantic city. >> yeah. i think at least by 8:00. it may have been earlier than that, actually. the winds were building up all

day long. i guess the best way to describe it -- i started off my day this morning, i took a photographer because i had a feeling that there were going to be problems in the next community up and there were. there was water that broke through the dunes, debris on the street. then i went over to a nightclub a couple blocks away and that had been half destroyed by the surf. when i came back here into town, i must have picked up a nail because i got that old tire warning light. i got the folks at the seaside heights police department, fire department, and dpw to rescue me and patch my tire. i got to give a shout out to those folks because they really saved me. there's no firestone store around to help me today, i can guarantee you that. but standing out in those winds 40 miles an hour, 45 miles an hour on the boardwalk with the spray and sand and salt water

stinging into your face was a very gruesome experience, one that i would not recommend to anybody. we thought about going inland a little bit because of the overwash starting to come on to the boardwalk here and then we realized it's so dark because there's no power in this whole town, we didn't know what we would run into because earlier we had seen stoplights smashed on to the ground, we saw roof tiles flying off. it wasn't a pretty -- as a matter of fact, let me show you something. to give you an idea, chris, of how dangerous this is, there's a sign up there that is flapping in the wind right now. you can see -- that is a metal sign and appropriately, it says, bo body piercing. if that were to fly off and hit us, it would be doing some body piercing, as a matter of fact my photographer was hit by a falling piece of sign and it cut his wrist and ring finger but if

you're not one who likes the sight of blood, you would not want to be with us at the time. he's okay. we taped him up. we had a first aid that the company provides. but that kind of gives you a really good idea of the conditions that we're in right now just trying to be safe. i think we are. we're on some of the highest ground in seaside heights right now and i'm told down the street lot of flooding. about five blocks down that street, lots of flooding because that's the back bay where the high tide is on the bay even though now we're headed towards the low tide on the ocean which i'm maybe 100 yards away from right now behind my cameraman. >> brian thompson, you have been doing amazing reporting. i've been watching you throughout the day and into the evening and we appreciate you still being up and with us and be careful out there. i think what brian pointed out is very important because we've seen it all throughout the region that's been affected by

sandy. you have things that were damaged like that sign and they could potentially become projectiles. all it might need is a big gust of wind. as i was coming into work, sixth avenue which brings us right here to 30 rockefeller center, a big tree right down in the middle of the street down in chelsea which is in lower manhattan. so a lot yet to be seen and you have a lot of people, including reporters, who are up a very long number of hours. many of them medical workers and we have an update that we told thaw the nyu medical center in new york city was being evacuated and now another hospital, mt. sinai has put out a statement that they are evacuating adults in pediatric care, neonatal care and obstetrics. when you have the evacuation of

a hospital like nyu, you have other hospitals nearby that are top class facilities able to take in some of those patients and that's what they are doing. but those medical workers, among the people having a very long night and potentially a couple of long days and nights to come. it is 43 minutes past the hour. msnbc's coverage of sandy will continue right after this. [ male announcer ] do you have the legal protection you need? at legalzoom, we've created a better place to turn for your legal matters. maybe you want to incorporate a business you'd like to start. or protect your family with a will or living trust. legalzoom makes it easy with step-by-step help when completing your personalized document -- or you can even access an attorney to guide you along. with an "a" rating from the better business bureau legalzoom helps you get personalized and affordable legal protection. in most states, a legal plan attorney is available with every personalized document to answer any questions. get started at legalzoom.com today. and now you're protected. it will be a dollar saved by somebody who switched to esurance.

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continues to be sort of life-saving operations and, you know, minimizing loss of life and injury due to flooding, wind and debris downed power line. fortunately it's at night, people are in their homes. but tomorrow that activity will continue. sandy's been big and powerful and has really pounded maryland. we had -- we will have up to two feet of snow in western maryland. coastal flooding on the eastern shore of maryland and about 350,000 home without power throughout the state. so certainly hurricane sandy has taken its toll on maryland. >> the national weather service said that the flooding along the potomac river is the worst that they've recorded in 16 years. what are some of the problems that you're hearing in that part of the state? >> sure. we're hearing flooding

throughout the state, the potomac, also in the lower shore of maryland we're hearing reports from the field similar to what you just reported, that people are saying 50 years, 60 years haven't seen this much flooding. we had to evacuate residences in chris field maryland on the lower shore. we have 41 shelters opened. about 1200 or more marylanders are currently sheltering in these areas, shelters around the state. so we're seeing flooding that, you know, most of us, many of us have not seen before in maryland. >> i'm also reading reports about trees down in maryland. have you had a lot of rain where the root systems may have been particularly wet? >> certainly. northeast maryland, which is, you know, close to the delaware and pennsylvania border, a lot of rain there. power outages are at the highest

levels there. but also on the lower shore of maryland as well as southern maryland. you know, tremendous amount of precipitation and winds and then, as you mentioned, the root system of trees tend toway, and expecting to see a lot of downed trees, downed wires, and power outages that will probably last days, if not, you know, into, you know, early next week. and certainly don't want to be in the business of forecasting when we'll restore power, but just sufficient e it to say it' going to be a long time before we get all homes and businesses restored power. >> you think it could be until next week, some people will continue to not have electricity? >> yeah, it will be quite some time. we, you know, our utilities have requested mutual assistance from other states. i know we'll be competing with surrounding states for that same assistance. but i think it's going to be --

it's going to be quite a few days until we restore all families and businesses, all homes and businesses to power in maryland. >> i know today a lot of businesses were shut. schools were closed. colleges and universities closed. you're expecting the same tomorrow? >> yeah, tomorrow, maryland state government will be closed. the federal government announced that certainly the national capital region, federal offices will be closed. all of our k-12 schools are closed. most if not all of our colleges will close. and this gives us the opportunity to begin sort of the inspection of critical infrastructure and government facilities that we can ensure, you know, the continuity of government operations. so, you know, by keeping the workforce at home, it will enable essential personnel to go in and do the work that they need to do before we bring back the workforce. >> maryland lieutenant governor anthony brown, thank you so much, sir. good luck. >> thank you. >> and reports of two deaths now

in pennsylvania. confirmed in the wake of this massive storm. an 8-year-old boy in susquehanna county died when a tree limb fell on him in franklin township. we're also hearing a 62-year-old man died after a tree fell on top of a house in pike township near boyerstown. that's the second time we've actually heard one in new york and one now in pennsylvania of a tree falling into a house and killing the person inside. again, a lot of new information coming in. virtually every minute now. we're going to keep you updated throughout the evening and into the early morning hours. you're watching msnbc's coverage of sandy. ♪

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in new york city a construction crane partially collapsed and could be seen dangling over midtown manhattan. video posted on youtube actually

shows the crane as it collapses. the streets below and several nearby buildings were cleared as city officials tried to figure out what to do next. this is an ongoing situation. there you see it tonight. through that night vision lens. another situation at myu medical center. being evacuated. rehema ellis is on scene. what's going on where you are? >> there are just dozens of ambulances lined up in front of the emergency entrance to new york medical center, chris. it's an eerey scene. the lights are out but for the headlights you see and the red flashing lights that you can see coming from the ambulances. they are lined up to get to the entrance where they're going to evacuate some 215 patients. the statement that was released just a short while ago from hospital officials says something to the effect of due to the severity of the storm, they're having intermittent phone service, they did not expect that they were going to

have the kind of calamity that they have in terms of these power outages. so for the safety of their patients, they are moving them to other facilities. also, because their phone service is just so intermittent, they are telling people that the hospital that will be receiving these patients will then notify their loved ones because they can't do it from new york university medical center. so, yet another instance of how manhattan, new york, in general is just trying to deal with this problem. we are here, as i say, in lower manhattan, but for the moon light and the lights from the hospital medical emergency vehicles, it's dark down here. i mean, it is pitch black down here. we can see that there are trees that have been blown down. there are some awning that have been blown down. some of the store fronts are down. the streets are a mess. police are everywhere because there also has been a lot of water flooding the area. so you've got a lot of emergency crews out.

you've got police crews out trying to make certain that people who have come out of their houses will be safe as they roam through the streets. new york city's mayor has told people they should stay inside because it is so dangerous out here. we can even smell gas as we were walking down beyond the hospital. so you don't really know what's happening. you don't know what you're going to come up on because the streetlights are all out. chris? >> rehema ellis. thank you so much. be careful out there. we're going to continue our coverage of sandy not just in manhattan, but up and down the eastern seaboard. we're not just looking at flooding and downed power lines. we have major winter storm that is affecting parts of west virginia. we've got it all covered for you. live continuing coverage throughout the night here on msnbc.

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